
Class 



Rnnl( M f ^ \a / n 



10 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 




Granville P. WiLsor 



PIONEERS OF THE 
MAGALLOWAY 



FROM 

1820 TO 1904 



BY 

GRANVILLE P. WILSON 



Published by the Author 
Old Orchard, Maine 

1918 



Copyright, 1918 

BY 

Granville P. Wilson 



-JUL 121918 

©CI.A4996f>5 



PREFACE 

The following brief and incomplete biographies of 
certain early settlers of the Magalloway region, in Maine 
and New Hampshire, are here undertaken by probably 
the last individual now living whose memory can recall 
with any distinctness the data and chronology of that 
region's early history, and the personalities identified 
with the same. An ardent filial regard for his birth- 
place and childhood home, now prompts the writer of 
these sketches to seize the apparently last opportunity 
to save from threatened oblivion the records of all 
that was once dear to him on earth, and to transmit 
to posterity what may yet be of value as a connecting 
link between the present, and the sacred — the inestima- 
ble — and the ever-instructive and venerated past. 

I count them faithless evermore whose human hearts are led astray 
From the dear world we loved of yore, by that which is, today. 
I count them false who cherish less than all on time's uncertain shore. 
Our friends, our home, our happiness, of years that are no more. 

I count them good and true alone to whom the toils, the loves, the tears, 
And friendships, long aforetime known, are sacred as in former years. 
I count them blest to whom appears the recompense for all in store — 
The sweetness that all life endears by that which was of yore. 

GRANVILLE P. WILSON. 
Old Orchard Beach, June 18, 1918. 







CONTENTS 








PAGE 


Chapter 


I. 


Introduction 


. 13-15 


Chapter 


II. 


Jonathan Leavit 


. 16-18 


Chapter III. 


John Bennett . 


. 19-20 


Chapter 


IV. 


Isaac York 


. 21-22 


Chapter 


V. 


Richard Lombard 


. 23-24 


Chapter 


VI. 


Lemuel Fickett 


. 25-27 


Chapter 


VII. 


John Lombard . 


. 28-29 


Chapter 


VIII. 


Israel T. Linnell 


. 30-31 


Chapter 


IX. 


David Robbins 


. 32-34 


Chapter 


X. 


Joshua Lombard 


. 35-38 


Chapter 


XI. 


Alvan Wilson . 


. 39-40 


Chapter 


XII. 


Captain John M. Wilson 


. 41-50 


Chapter 


XIII. 


Joseph Sturtevant 


. 51-52 


Chapter 


XIV. 


Lorenzo D. Lombard 


. 53-54 


Chapter 


XV. 


Nelson Fickett 


. 55 


Chapter 


XVI. 


Lorenzo D. Linnell . 


. 56-57 


Chapter 


XVII. 


David M. Sturtevant 


. 58-60 


Chapter 


XVIII 


. Conclusion 


. 61 


Supplement 


• ••••• 


. 62-64 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



GRANVILLE P. WILSON Frontispiece 

PETER BENNETT FacingpagelS 

OILMAN BENNETT '« 20 

ELDER RICHARD LOMBARD ..." 22 

RICHARD FRANKLIN LOMBARD . . " 24 

LEMUEL FICKETT " 26 

AZISCOOS MOUNTAIN, FROM WILSON'S 

MILLS, ME «♦ 32 

JOSHUA LOMBARD «« 36 

CAPTAIN JOHN M. WILSON . . . . " 42 

WILLIAM H. — SON OF CAPTAIN JOHN M. 

WILSON " 46 

AZISCOOS HOUSE, WILSON'S MILLS, ME. . " 54 

LORENZO DOW LINNELL . . . . " 56 

DAVID M. STURTEVANT ....'« 58 
AZISCOOS DAM - FALLS OF THE MAGAL- 

LOWAY «« 62 



PIONEERS OF THE 
MAGALLOWAY 



PIONEERS OF THE 
MAGALLOWAY 



CHAPTER I 

''Beneath those rugged elms — that yew-tree's shade, 
Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap, 
Each in his narrow cell forever laid, 

The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep. 

"The breezy call of incense-breathing morn — 

The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed, 
The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn. 
No more shall 'rouse them from their lowly bed. 

''Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield. 

Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe hath broke. 
How jocund did they drive their team a-field! 

How bow'd the woods beneath their sturdy stroke!" 

IN commemorating the pioneers of the 
Magalloway, I have no heroic feats of arms 
to chronicle, — no scholars — orators — eccle- 
siastics or statesmen to memorize, — no tri- 
umphs of art — science — greed or tyranny 
to celebrate, but 

"Let not ambition mark their useful toil. 
Their homely joys and destiny, obscure. 
Or grandeur hear with a disdainful smile 
The short and simple annals of the poor." 

13 



Far away in the northwestern extremity of 
the State of Maine, and northeastern of New 
Hampshire, on the shores of the largest 
tributary of the Androscoggin River, and 
about a hundred and fifty miles from any sea- 
port, may be found a few straggling settle- 
ments, extending some ten miles along the 
stream — bounded on the north by the 45th 
parallel of north latitude, and south by Lake 
Umbagog. These are the settlements of the 
Magalloway, which, though commenced more 
than eighty years since, have not yet attained 
to the prominence of a Chicago or a Minne- 
apolis, notwithstanding their advantage over 
the latter, in honorable and ripening age. 
No railroad yet affords them communication 
with the great mass of mankind, save at the 
preliminary expense of a fifty-mile, and ten- 
hour, ride by stage, over a rugged and most 
uninviting road, and exposure, in the winter 
season, to such a sweep of north winds as 
hardly to be matched this side of the polar 
regions. 

Within the settlements, however, the roads 
are good, the currents of the air normal, the 
hotel accommodations ample and the inhabi- 
tants hospitable and intelligent. Two post- 
offices, two churches, two hotels (each two 
some five miles apart), two stores of general 
merchandise and three school-houses, now 
minister to the mental, spiritual and physical 
needs of the little community, while spread 
out in a gorgeous panorama of green, during 

14 



the summer months, He the luxuriant meadows 
and upland fields, dotted here and there with 
the neat white cottages of the owners, and, 
towering over all, on either hand rise the 
majestic mountains, covered to their summits 
with verdure and adding to the scene a pictur- 
esqueness unsurpassed among the romantic 
sporting resorts of the Rangeley Lake region. 
The initial step in these settlements was 
made at some indefinitely known date, but 
not far from the year 1820, on the westerly 
side of the Magalloway, near the confluence 
of the Diamond River therewith, some eight 
miles north of the outlet of Umbagog Lake 
and on territory granted by the State of New 
Hampshire to Dartmouth College, which 
still holds possession of the same. 



15 



CHAPTER II 

ANOTHER location, also on the Dart- 
mouth College Grant, was made in the 
year 1823, on land already partially cleared 
by fire which had been set by the first set- 
tler and which devoured the forest eastward 
for many miles. 

This second location was by Jonathan 
Leavit of Gilead, Me., who obtained abun- 
dant crops of wheat and other produce from 
the soil enriched by the ashes of the late fire, 
and was soon on the high road to prosperity. 
His oldest son (Elihu), now eighty years of 
age and a prosperous and wealthy farmer, 
still resides about a mile from the home of his 
youth, surrounded by his offspring of the 
third generation. 

This Mr. Leavit (Elihu), in a recent conver- 
sation with the writer of these sketches, 
related the following experience, quite charac- 
teristic of the settlement's early history. 
^^One winter day," said he, ^Vhen I had got 
to be quite a good-sized boy, I was at work 
with my father at our barn, which was some 
considerable distance from the river, and late 
in the afternoon he sent me out to put up the 
cattle. As soon as I got outside the barn I 
heard a cry of distress from the direction of 

16 



the river, and went back, telling father, 'There 
is somebody in trouble at the river, I guess, by 
the sound.' Father grabbed a logging chain 
that lay in the yard, and we ran for the river. 
There we found Captain Wilson, who had 
broken through the ice with his horse and 
sleigh, trying to get ashore and to drag with 
him an old gentleman who had been riding 
with him and was a much heavier man than 
himself. Father threw the chain to them, 
and the old gentleman grabbed it, but his 
hands were so numb with cold he couldn't 
hold on, till one of his fingers got caught in a 
link of the chain, and we drew him out by 
that. Captain Wilson's turn came next, and 
then that of the horse, which stood shivering 
in the water. 'Now !' said father, 'you men ' 'line 
it" for John Hibbard's (the nearest house) 
as quick as you can go! Elihu! you take that 
horse to our barn and rub him down, as quick 
as possible!' I mounted the horse's back, 
and found him fully as ready to go as I was to 
have him. All were soon safely under cover, 
but the old gentleman was badly chilled, as 
well as frightened, and Captain Wilson 
declared he could have kept his hold on him 
in the current but a few moments longer." 

Mr. Leavit continued his farming operations 
on the Magalloway for many years. Two of 
his young daughters were drowned at once, 
during the time, while endeavoring to guide 
their own canoe across the stream. Mr. 
Leavit himself dragged the river for their 

17 



bodies, and on bringing the first to the surface, 
fainted, it is said, and fell senseless in his boat. 
It was a terrible and overwhelming blow to 
the family. In later years, ^Vhen the wearied 
heart and the failing head,'^ as Irving says, 
began to warn Mr. Leavit that the evening of 
his life was drawing near, he turned ^^as 
naturally as the infant to it^s mother^s arms'' 
toward his native town, to '^sink to sleep in 
the bosom of the scene of his childhood." 



18 




^^ 0>m 





Peter Bennett 

Fourth son of the first Bennett family 

on the Magalloway 



CHAPTER III 

THE third settler on the Magalloway, and 
the first north of Umbagog Lake, in 
Oxford County, Maine, was John Bennett of 
Gilead, the father-in-law of Jonathan Leavit. 
This was at about the year 1824. Together 
with his six stalwart sons — Frederick, John, 
David, Peter, Gilman and Ransom — he cleared 
up a fine farm on either side of the state line, 
some seven miles above the mouth of the 
river, which farm is now divided into several 
different estates and occupied by a growing 
country hamlet. 

Mr. Bennett and his sons were known as 
mighty hunters, and skilled woodsmen in 
whatever department thereof such skill was 
necessary. A detailed account of their various 
adventures, hardships and hair-breadth 
escapes, would fill volumes. The father of 
the family was especially famous as a trapper 
of bears, with which the region then abounded. 
Peter, the fourth son, on one occasion, it is 
said, after having, with a party of hunters, 
tramped all day through a winter storm, 
prepared (weary, wet and cold), to camp for 
the night, but found, on attempting to light 
their fire, that every match they had was too 
wet to ignite by friction. They tried one 

19 



after another, but with no success. A serious 
dilemma here confronted the party, but Peter 
was equal to the emergency. Seizing his axe, 
he began striking it, with all his two-hundred- 
pound might, into a tree, every blow in the 
same scarf, until the axe was heated sufficiently 
to enable them to light their damp matches 
on it, by which means a fire was kindled and 
the party saved from freezing to death. 

John, the elder brother of Peter, who lived 
on a farm of his own, some distance down the 
river from his father's place, was killed in the 
lumbering woods, in 1845, by a falling tree. 
His eldest son Nahum, who claims to have 
been the first white child born on the Magallo- 
way waters, is now seventy-five years old, and 
not only superintends all, but performs a large 
share of the labor of his large and fertile farm, 
about a mile from the former Bennett home- 
stead. 

Of the six sons of John, Sr., only three — 
Frederick, Peter and Oilman — lived to old 
age. The father, like the majority of the 
Magalloway's first settlers, returned to his 
native place to die, after age and infirmity 
had disqualified him for pioneer life. 



20 




Oilman Bennett 

Fifth son of John (senior), the first settler 

who ever went from the Magalloway 

to fight for his country 



CHAPTER IV 

ISAAC YORK of Bethel, Me., a veteran of 
the Revolutionary War, numbers fourth on 
the roll of Magalloway pioneers. He settled 
on the east side of the river, near the great 
bend, where the stream runs in exactly oppo- 
site directions within the space of a few rods, 
and about six miles from its confluence with 
the Androscoggin. Mr. York had, years before, 
traversed the region in trade with the Indians 
for furs, bringing on his back, it is said, at 
each trip from Bethel, a ten-gallon keg of 
New England rum, which he exchanged with 
the ^^simple natives'' for the valuable furs with 
which the wilderness then abounded. It may 
be well to remark here that the traffic in 
spirituous liquors was not then, as now, looked 
upon as a crime and disgrace to humanity; 
but however public opinion may regard this 
action of our old soldier-pioneer, we should 
remember that this same lucrative traffic was 
one of the first fruits of the so-called Christian 
civilization introduced, by United States bayo- 
nets and firebrands, into the Philippine Islands 
in 1899, and whereas the judgment of the 
United States Court was invoked to decide 
whether or not the constitution should follow 
the flag to the aforesaid Islands, the liquor 

21 



traffic found no trouble (as it never does) in 
rushing in where angels and constitutions 
fear to tread. 

Mr. York selected for his new abiding place 
what proved to be the most valuable farm on 
the river. Its broad and level meadows have 
been for many years the field of extensive 
farming operations, the Berlin Mills Lumber 
Company now using it as a base of supplies for 
the hundreds of horses employed by them in 
that section. The old hero died on his own 
fine estate, in 1844, at the ripe age of ninety- 
five years. His son-in-law, Nathaniel Bean, 
succeeded him in the cultivation of his many 
and beautiful acres. His posterity to the fifth 
generation now reside near the scene of his 
herculean toil. 



22 




Elder Richard Lombard 

Founder of the northern-most settlement 

of Oxford County, Maine 



CHAPTER V 

THE founder of the upper settlement on the 
Magalloway, the extreme northwesterly 
settlement of Oxford County, Maine, now 
known as Lincoln Plantation (post-ofhce,Wil- 
son's Mills), was Richard Lombard of Portland, 
Me., who commenced there in 1825. With his 
five athletic sons — Lorenzo, Samuel, David, 
Richard and Henry — he cleared up what are 
now three of the best farms in the township, 
built the first two-story house on the river, 
and after some years of prosperous culture of 
the soil, sold out half of his estate to William 
Fickett and sons of Cape Elizabeth, gave up 
the management of the remainder to his three 
eldest sons and devoted the balance of his 
days mostly to evangelistic work. 

Richard was not a traditional hero^ of the 
border, — not a typical pioneer of civilization, 
— save in spiritual affairs, but in these he was 
an enthusiast. Without education or special 
gifts therefor, in any notable degree, the 
absorbing ambition of his life seemed to be 
the Gospel ministry and the propagation of 
the faith of the Methodist church. His home 
was the rallying point and rendezvous of 
religious effort for the whole community while 
he remained within it, not only for the white 

23 



residents, but for th^ 

aborigines, many of whom'cl'^'"f ^ '"^''"^d 
attend his ministrations of th^/r^? ^^^' ^o 
share the kindly and Inf. ^^ ^""^ ^nd to 
h's hospitable abode ^ ™"' atmosphere of 



-■-'"t-"-«-^ic aooae. -"t-.i^ic <ji 

. -^ he first school in the qet-tl^ 

J^^ a portion of his dwellfnVan^T"i ^^' ^^P^ 
house erected on land don ..A^^''* ^^J^ool- 

-"' ,'n which school-tef'th^J ^'^ ^''^^^^ 
elders last Gospel serv.vl l , venerable 

;^as performed "^^n 1853 r/^' ^^g^Howay 
Chebeague Island, near PorVl J^t""^ ^reat 
age of eighty-two years T' ^Z- ^' ^^^ 
(one m New York one ; d , daughters 
^ «o? (Richard 2nd) in Wil^- ^^"'^'id) and 
survive him, all at verv i?'"^'°",' ^^'^ «till 
nameis commemo ated^bv J'"'"'^ "?^^'- ^^' 
'^ow m the first church Zi"^ memorial win- 

°n the Magalloway waters '' ''''' ^^^«ed 



24 




Richard Franklin Lombard 



CHAPTER VI 

LEMUEL FICKETT, the second of the 
''upper township'^ settlers, came from 
Cape Ehzabeth, Me., in 1831, and located 
on the west side of the river, about a mile 
below the great falls. His brother William, 
also of Cape Elizabeth, located soon after- 
ward directly opposite, on the east side, on 
land purchased of Richard Lombard, as be- 
fore stated. The two brothers had been 
reared ''after the most straightest sect" of 
the Friends or Quaker religion, but William, 
the elder of the two, had departed from 
the counsel and creed of his youth and be- 
come a believer and exhorter of the Meth- 
odist persuasion. Both were exemplary, in- 
dustrious and thrifty citizens. William was 
conspicuous for his eccentricity, his egotism 
and his Quaker "plainness of speech," which 
procured him enemies, especially when indulged 
in on funeral occasions, at which he was some- 
times called to officiate. He was especially 
severe on the church in which he had been 
reared, for its "silent worship," which ill 
accorded with the lively demonstrativeness of 
his newly-adopted faith and his own active 
temperament. Not even his reverence for 
Sunday could always keep his business-like 

25 



spirit in subjection. ^^I have," said he, one 
fine Sunday in July, ^^done the chores this 
morning, read fifteen chapters in the Bible 
and opened forty tumbles of hay." This he 
related to a neighbor as a pretty-fair fore- 
noon's work for ^'a, boy sixty-one years of 
age," as none but a most punctilious Sun- 
day keeper will dispute. 

As his age and accompanying ill health 
increased, so did his ambition, enterprise and 
plans for larger farming operations, and quite 
unpleasant he was wont to make it for anyone 
who expressed a doubt as to his ever realizing 
his fond worldly hopes. When brought, how- 
ever, to death's door, he submitted meekly to 
his lot, acknowledged that his work on earth 
was done and, after kindly bidding adieu to 
his family and neighbors, yielded up, without 
a struggle, his hopeful and energetic spirit to 
the all-compassionate God who gave it. 

Lemuel, the brother, was almost as dif- 
ferent from William as though born of another 
race. As free from the suspicion of demon- 
strativeness as his brother was of reticence, 
his life was one unvaried career of devotion 
to the stern realities of existence, apparently 
without a thought, or aspiration, for anything 
but the winning of an honest livelihood and 
the discharge of his .duty as the head of a 
family and as a citizen of the civilized world. 
He had been an experienced sailor to the 
West Indies, and first mate of the vessel on 
which he made his last voyage before being 

26 




Lemuel Fickett 

Second settler of upper Magalloway, 

or Lincoln Plantation 



I 



obliged to abandon the sea on account of ill 
health. With a large family to maintain and 
a constant struggle with disease, together 
with the hardships of pioneer life, he now 
found ample exercise for all the heroic requi- 
sites of his former occupation; but perseverance 
will zain, and the brothers both lived to see 
their fields broaden, their flocks and other 
possessions to increase, and finally to rejoice 
in an ample return for their indefatigable 
labors. Both died in peace, in the comfort- 
able homes built by their own hands, the 
elder in 1852, at the age of sixty-seven; the 
younger in 1864, at the age of sixty-three. 
Their posterity now prosper on the beautiful 
estates left by their grandsires. 



27 



CHAPTER VII 

JOHN LOMBARD of Otisfield, Me., settled, 
J in 1828, on a hill about half a mile east of 
the Magalloway, and east of the state line, 
also the farthest south of any location yet 
made on the river. He had a large and profit- 
able farm; kept a small store, from which he 
supplied the neighboring settlers with dry 
goods and groceries, and soon became an 
influential man in the community. With an 
intelligent and prepossessing family of sons 
and daughters, his home was a favorite resort 
for the rising pioneer generation, and many 
are the pleasant memories to be recalled, by 
now aged people, of festive scenes and enjoy- 
able occasions at his comfortable and ample 
abode, none favoring or appreciating such 
occasions more than the ever-genial host 
himself. 

But alas for the changes of all-devouring 
time! After burying his aged father, his wife, 
his eldest son, and one or two young daughters, 
beneath the soil of his hillside home, and 
becoming himself enfeebled by sickness and 
the infirmities of age, he sold out his posses- 
sions, abandoned the Magalloway, and passed 
the remaining few years of his life near the 

28 



scene of his early manhood, his return thither 
being some twelve years prior to the great 
Civil War, in which one of his younger sons, 
John C, fell nobly for the Union at the bloody 
battle of the Wilderness. 



29 



CHAPTER VIII 

ISRAEL T. LINNELL of Bethel, Me., in the 
year 1830, located on the same hill where Mr. 
Lombard resided, on a lot which his brother, 
Luther Linnell, had partially cleared, but 
abandoned. Israel was an experienced sailor 
and soldier, having, as he claimed, fought in 
the wars of our country, on both land and sea. 
Of small stature, but indomitable will and 
resolution, he was not a man to flinch at 
danger or difficulties. He soon had his hill 
farm in a good state of productiveness, but 
finding a locality more to his liking farther 
up the river, and nearer the same, which was 
then their only highway, he moved thither, 
where he carried on farming successfully for 
many years. His residence, being about mid- 
way the two extremities of the State-of-Maine 
settlements, was afterwards used as a meeting 
place for the transaction of plantation busi- 
ness and the polling of votes at the annual 
elections. The second two-story house on 
the river was built by Mr. Linnell, as also the 
first rod of good carriage road. 

In his declining years, his wife having died 
and family all departed, he went to reside 
with his youngest daughter, at Manchester, 
N. H., where he not long after died, at the 

30 



age of ninety-two years. His eldest son, 
Lorenzo D., and descendants to the fifth 
generation, still reside within a mile of his 
former abode. His youngest and only other 
son, George W., fell nobly in the cause of the 
Union, at Port Hudson, in 1863, which was 
some years prior to his father's death. 



31 



CHAPTER IX 

I HAVE hitherto refrained (perhaps unjustly) 
from especial notice of the first Magalloway 
settler, fearing the objections which their 
posterity might raise against having his name 
associated with those of the worthies already 
mentioned. David Robbins (for that was 
the first settler's name) has ever been held 
in abhorrence as a robber and murderer, but 
judged by the identical standard by which 
our so-called ^'Christian government" is 
judged and approved by both pulpit and 
populace, we shall find Mr. Robbins to have 
been not only a patriot of the first order, but 
also an eminent philanthropist and most useful 
citizen. This much is certain, — he was a 
pioneer of progress and of commerce (fur 
trade) in that wilderness. He was, more- 
over (to use the reported language of Dr. 
Lyman Abbott), an ^^Anglo-Saxon Ox," and, 
as a consequence, no native '^barbaric dog" 
had '^any right to the crib where he wanted 
to feed," or, we might say, to the furs that he 
coveted, by whomsoever caught or claimed. 
True, his achievements for expansion, and 
the open door in the northeast, were diminu- 
tive and inglorious, compared with those of 
our ^^Christian world-power" in the Philippine 
Islands. He never, as far as known, robbed 

32 



but three men, or murdered but two, In the 
interest of civilization, commerce and ^'good 
government;" but, so far, his operations were 
equally patriotic and praiseworthy, and his 
final excuse just the same, which excuse, 
divested of all its bombast and unparalleled 
hypocrisy, is just this: both Mr. Robbins and 
the United States government coveted that 
which was in the possession of others. They 
could not obtain the same without killing 
those possessors; and being able, they did so, 
and took possession of the property. This 
is the ^'long and short'' of the whole matter. 
If the whole moral law of God, since the time 
of the Naboth and Jezebel episode, has been 
reversed or annulled, to promote the money- 
getting ambitions of the ^ ^Christian United 
States," as is the logical and unavoidable 
inference from the recent teachings of our 
most prominent and popular Doctors of 
Divinity, and if all the acts of the United 
States government during the last six years 
are to become examples and standards of 
statesmanship and righteousness, as now 
seems to be the popular demand, then I here- 
with propose the immediate erection of a 
monument, higher than Mount Aziscoos,* 
to the memory of David Robbins, for the 
murders and robberies he committed in the 
cause of expansion, civilization and the 



*A lofty and picturesque mountain, more than three thousand feet high, ris- 
ing from, and extending for three miles along, the shore of the Magalloway, 
and from the summit of which a view of surpassing interest and grandeur is 
obtained. 



extension of United States commerce, glory 
and world-power, in the ^^unassimilated'^ 
region of the Androscoggin Lakes. 

As to the precise date of Mr. Robbins' 
advent on the Magalloway, or of his departure 
therefrom, the writer of this can give no 
information. He went thither, as is supposed, 
to escape justice, and it is certain he left 
Lancaster, N. H., jail, a few years later, for 
the same purpose, in both of w^hich migrations 
he appears to have been eminently successful. 
He resided on the Magalloway several years 
contemporarily with the Bennett, Leavit 
and Lombard families, and Mr. Nahum 
Bennett now distinctly remembers seeing him 
when brought down the river, in irons, by 
the old hero, Lewis Loomis (of Colebrook), on 
the way to Lancaster jail. This must have 
been near the year 1835. His career in the 
Lake region has long been the theme of both 
history and romance, but of his final fate 
nothing authentic is, or perhaps ever will be, 
known. The only mitigating traits of his 
infamous character seem to have been that 
he was energetic, industrious and thrifty. 
His wife, it is said, never could be persuaded 
or convinced of his guilt, the evidence of 
which was unquestionable, though never 
brought before a jury. Tradition makes him 
out to have been finally hung in Canada, for 
a crime committed after his escape from 
Lancaster jail, but this has never been sub- 
stantiated. 

34 



CHAPTER X 

THE next ^^upper township" settler, after 
the Fickett brothers, was Joshua Lom- 
bard of Oxford, Me., and from this period we 
can almost say, with the Scripture, that ^'there 
were giants in those days.'' Mr. Lombard 
was six feet or more in height, two hundred 
and fifty pounds or more in weight, had two 
sons of nearly his own size, and one even 
larger. If our Joshua had not the great 
mission of his Scripture namesake to perform, 
he certainly was endowed with a fair share 
of his heroic spirit and personal prowess. 
Though he never commanded the sun to 
stand still, he once caused a wild moose to do 
so, without harming the creature in the least. 
On another occasion, when attacked by a 
vicious bull, he is said to have thrown the 
animal upon its back, driven its horns into 
the sod, and left him to his own reflections. 

If all the traditions and representations 
of the pioneer Methodist of the Peter Cart- 
wright type were lost to the world, they might 
largely be restored from reminiscences of this 
Boanerges of the Magalloway, whose moral 
vigor was in keeping with his physical and 
whose courage was entirely commensurate 
with both. He had been, according to his 

35 



own numerous testimonies in ^^social meeting" 
a most degraded drunkard, but having (as he 
expressed it) ^'speerenced reHgion" and ^^jined 
the Methodists/' his hatred of rum was ever 
afterward as ardent as his love of it had been 
before. For a long time after his conversion 
he is said to have kept a well-filled bottle in 
his cupboard at home, and when sorely 
tempted, by his former ^^b'sett'n sin," to take 
a drink, would go to the shelf, seize the bottle, 
and giving it a defiant shake, exclaim in the 
thunder tones of which he was well known to 
be capable, '^V\\ conquer ye! FU master ye!" 
And master it he did, with a heroism worthy 
of the name of Israel's ancient deliverer. 

Mr. Lombard was, as may be supposed, a 
great patron and supporter of the Gospel 
ministry, and sometimes officiated at religious 
meetings himself. On such occasions, with 
his never-failing Methodist ^'hembook" at 
hand, he frequently led the singing, and no 
church organ or other musical machinery was 
necessary when the choice of hymns happened 
to fall on his favorite, old Turner. The bass 
of this glorious old melody, as he rendered it, 
would have been a caution to Myron Whitney. 
He would almost have imagined that seven 
thunders uttered their voices. It would have 
done one's soul good, whether he ioined in 
the spirit of the meeting or not, to be present 
at so hearty, so spontaneous, so tremendous a 
performance. 

In the winter of 1854, when the old Christian 

36 




Joshua Lombard 



soldier was well advanced in years, he fell into 
a lingering illness, and at a revival meeting 
in the neighborhood, told his hearers that he 
had ^^no idee" that he would be with them a 
year from then; but, about that time, as he 
afterwards stated, he ^^told the Lord" that if 
He would let him live fifteen years longer, as 
he did King Hezekiah, after his sickness 
(spoken of in II. Kings: 20), he would then be 
willing to go. He died in 1869, just fifteen 
years from the date of his promise. Is the 
age of miracles past? 

Mr. Lombard built, with his own hands, 
the first grist mill in the settlement, and caused 
to be built the first mill for the manufacture 
of shingles and clapboards, which he trans- 
ported down the river and across the Umbagog 
to market, in a huge boat built by himself 
and called by his neighbors the Great Eastern. 
He was engaged in the lumber business as well 
as farming during all the years of his residence 
on the Magalloway, and drove his own team 
in winter, drawing timber from the woods, 
after his recovery from the sickness before 
mentioned, when he was more than eighty 
years old. 

His oldest son, Thomas, who was larger 
than his father, and the strongest man on the 
river, never, as far as his neighbors knew, 
employed his great strength to any important 
purpose. After commencing life for himself, 
with a farm, a house and an industrious wife, 
he suddenly disappeared from the country, 

37 



and, as far as the writer of this ever knew, 
never was heard of afterward. No memorial 
of him now remains on the river, save the 
walled excavation, now in the midst of the 
forest, which was once the cellar of his humble 
abode. His mysterious absence dates from 
about the year 1846. 



38 



CHAPTER XI 

IN striking contrast with the athletic pio- 
neers last noticed, another of the heroic 
number now claims our attention, who in 
weight and in stature hardly exceeded the 
ordinary boy of twelve years, his greatest 
height during life being hardly iive feet; but 
what he lacked in physical proportions was 
more than made up in a certain quality 
commonly called ''grit,'' which was nothing 
less than phenomenal and wonderful. This 
was Alvan Wilson of Westbrook, Me. He had 
formerly been a cabin-boy, or sailor before 
the mast, on a coasting vessel, and no amount 
of old-time sailor ruffianism could intimidate 
or subdue the desperate temper, when aroused, 
of this puny grandson and greatgrandson of 
two who served in the great struggle for 
American Independence. 

Arriving on the Magalloway in 1831, he 
applied himself vigorously to clearing up a 
farm on its western shore, some three miles 
below the falls, built a log house, married one 
of the fair daughters of the patriarch Richard 
Lombard, and commenced a career of industry, 
prosperity and usefulness, which terminated 
only with his well-extended life. He was a 
man of extensive reading and compass of 

39 



intellect — a citizen of the world, rather than 
of the obscure hamlet where his lot was cast 
and to the upbuilding of which he faithfully 
contributed. He was chiefly instrumental in 
the erection of the first covered bridge, across 
the river, connecting the Maine and New 
Hampshire settlements, and was successively 
clerk, assessor and treasurer of the plantation 
for many years. The writer of this, has the 
statement from his own lips, that it was at his 
suggestion that the article was written and 
sent to the Portland Advertiser, which led to 
the building of the Atlantic & St. Lawrence 
(now Grand Trunk) Railroad. 

Mr. Wilson was an instance of great dis- 
parity between body and mind. His intellect 
and manly dignity towered above his diminu- 
tive person, like Charles the Great over his 
dwarf parent, Pepin le Bref. His soul was 
not circumscribed by the circuit of mountains 
around his rural home, or by the ocean 
bounds of his dear native country. The loss 
of the beloved wife of his early days, and 
afterward of his only and promising son, who 
fell valiantly in the great Civil War, were 
bereavements from which he never recovered. 
He died, in 1883, at the age of seventy-five, 
being succeeded in his estate by a married 
daughter, the sole solace and comforter of 
his declining years. 



40 



CHAPTER XII 

CAPTAIN JOHN M. WILSON, uncle of 
the preceding and native of the same 
town, commenced business on the Magal- 
loway near the year 1829, but made no perma- 
nent settlement there until five years later. 
Attracted thither by the prevailing timberland 
speculation of the times, he engaged arduously 
therein, and soon having the entire township 
at his disposal, immediately commenced opera- 
tions for the manufacture of the valuable pine 
timber with which the territory then abounded. 
Having located a farm and residence on the 
west shore of the river, near the foot of the 
falls, he straightway began the erection of a 
saw mill and stone dam, which last being 
carried away before completion, by a sudden 
freshet, was replaced by a dam of logs which 
proved a permanent barrier and conserver of 
the tremendous waterpower at that point. 

In 1842 he erected a grist mill on the 
opposite shore, and the following year, his 
saw mill having been burned by the gross 
carelessness of a neighbor who had been 
entrusted therewith, he immediately rebuilt 
the same, from which he supplied for many 
years the increasing demand for building 
material in all the surrounding region. 

41 



At about this time, by an article published 
in the Portland Weekly Advertiser, he aroused 
public attention to the project of a railroad 
from the Atlantic to the St. Lawrence, and 
Mr. John A. Poor of Portland, being a repre- 
sentative that year, seized and embodied the 
idea in a bill which was presented to, and 
passed by, the General Court of Maine, 
granting a charter for a railroad from Portland 
to Canada line, which action being recip- 
rocated on the part of the Canadian Parlia- 
ment, preparations for building immediately 
commenced. 

Captain Wilson himself piloted through the 
vast wilderness between his home and Canada, 
late in the autumn of 1844, the first expedition 
for the survey of a route for said railroad, 
intending, if possible, to have the valley of the 
Magalloway adopted as the great inter- 
national thoroughfare. This experience at 
that season of the year, of traversing, through 
a foot of crusted snow, an unknown and track- 
less wilderness more than fifty miles in extent, 
with only such provisions as they could carry 
on their backs, and the crew meanwhile on 
the verge of mutiny, fearing they were lost 
and would starve to death, — this, Mr. Wilson 
considered one of the most trying experiences 
of his pioneer life. 

The next year he piloted a similar expedi- 
tion, but with less hardship, through the 
valley of the Connecticut, but in these, as in 
many subsequent efforts toward opening up 

42 




Capt. John M. Wilson 
At 83 years of age 



his adopted wilderness country, he was doomed 
to grievous disappointment. 

His next enterprise for home improvement 
was the location of a carriage road thence, 
east of Umbagog Lake, to the nearest town 
beyond, and the building, on its route, of the 
first and only bridge ever built over the inlet 
of said lake. This project also, as far as 
related to the road, failed through the opposi- 
tion of local tax-payers, and to this day the 
only exit for the isolated Magalloway com- 
munity is by water, or down the west shore 
of the river, to Errol, N. H. 

In 1848 Captain Wilson was commissioned, 
in company with Honorable Isaac N. Stanley 
and Colonel Samuel Morrill of Dixiield, Me., 
to survey and set off wild lands in the town- 
ships bordering on the head waters of the 
Androscoggin, for the support of schools and 
the Gospel ministry, a work which occupied 
some four months' time and furnished much 
harmless adventure, and no little of enjoyable 
recreation, to mutual friends and kindred 
spirits in that line of business. 

In 1850 he procured the establishment of 
a United States mail-route to ^Wilson's Mills,'' 
and was himself appointed postmaster, which 
office he held fourteen years, the first mail 
carrier on the route being Luther D., eldest 
son of Lemuel Fickett, the second settler of 
the township. Mr. Wilson was also, the 
same year, appointed a deputy for taking 
the United States Census in the surrounding 

43 



district, and was soon afterward appointed, 
by the state executive, to fill a vacancy on the 
board of County Commissioners. 

In 1856 he procured and superintended the 
erection, near his mills, of the first bridge of 
any kind ever built over the Magalloway 
River. In 1858 he was appointed commis- 
sioner for Maine, in company with Commis- 
sioner Henry O. Kent of New Hampshire, to 
survey and re-establish the dividing line of 
the two contiguous States. Also the same 
year he personally superintended the location 
of a county road from his neighborhood, by 
way of Parmachene Lake, to meet another 
located from Newport, Canada, to the national 
boundary. This enterprise also failed for 
want of patronage, and the location was dis- 
continued. 

During the summers of 1863 and 1864, 
Captain Wilson was employed by the State 
in the survey of wild lands in the county of 
Aroostook. In 1874, when more than seventy- 
five years of age, he was employed late in 
autumn to re-trace and re-mark the 45th 
parallel of north latitude from its junction 
with the national boundaiy at Hall Stream, 
Vt., eastward through the wilderness of 
northern New Hampshire to Maine; and 
here again he was destined, at his advanced 
age, to contend with a disaffection, akin to 
mutiny, in his crew. Having subsisted for 
two weeks on the provisions they took 
on their backs with them from Canaan, Vt., 

44 



and having nearly exhausted the same, their 
purpose was to obtain more (when they 
should arrive there) of a crew of men who 
were building a dam on the Diamond River 
at a point which lay directly on their course. 
Day after day they watched and listened for 
the longed-for stream, but only to be dis- 
appointed. 

A lurking suspicion now seized certain of 
the crew that they had been led off the course 
by variations of the compass. At length, 
one fine afternoon, they came to the brink of 
a very deep valley, and one of the men 
climbed a tree to take observations. He had 
been engaged in lumbering on the Diamond, 
only the winter before, and was expected to 
recognize the locality. 

^'Well! what do ye think. ^'^ called out one 
of the men from below, to him. 

^^I am satisfied,^' said he, ^^that this is not 
the valley of the Diamond.'^ 

^What the devil is it, then?^^ excitedly 
asked the man below. 

^Well, youVe asked me too much. What's 
your opinion, Cap'n?" he asked, addressing 
the compass man, who was setting his instru- 
ment for another object. 

'^I don't know," was the careless reply; ^^I 
never was here before." 

At this the two line men stared with alarm. 
Their long-pent-up fears broke forth. 'We've 
gone on in this way long enough!" said one of 
them. 'We'd better use what little provi- 

45 



slons we've got, In getting where there's 
more, instead of running till It's all gone and 
then finding ourselves up at Parmachene Lake 
or the Lord knows where! Let's go back on 
the line!" 

At this point the ^^Cap'n," who had hitherto 
taken no notice of the crew's fears or com- 
plaints, broke in sternly, with: ^^Never! I 
have begun this job, and I shall finish it! 
This is the valley of the Diamond! We have 
provisions enough yet for another day, and 
shall reach more in that time! Spot that 
tree! — further-r to the right! — further-r-!" 

No more was said. The line men sprang 
to their places, plying their axes with the 
energy of desperation, and before sunset, had 
struck last winter's cuttings on the Diamond, 
and a last winter's logging camp, with a 
stove, fuel and lamps all ready for use in it, 
where they made themselves welcome and 
comfortable for the night, and the next day, 
at noon, reached the works of the dam- 
builders, from whence another day's survey 
brought them to the State of Maine (about 
two miles north of the upper Magalloway 
settlement) and to the completion of the 
operation. 

Captain Wilson's last public service, in the 
line of his life-long profession, was the survey 
and remarking, In the summer of 1877, of the 
boundaries of the Dartmouth College Grant, 
on the Diamond Rivers, the labor of which 
(involving two weeks of tracing lines over 

46 




William H. — Son ofCapt. John M. Wilson 

who cleared the most northerly farm in Oxford 

County, Maine, and built the first bridge 

over the Little Diamond River 



steep mountains and through swamps of 
tangling underbrush wet all the time with 
dew or rain) he was persuaded to relinquish 
to his two sons, while he himself remained 
at the nearest settlement to look after the 
work. He, however, afterwards spent one 
winter scaling timber in the woods of the 
Nulhegan River, Vermont, boarding and 
lodging at the lumbermen's camp, when he 
was in his eighty-second year. 

In the days of the old Whig party, Mr. 
Wilson had mingled somewhat in the turmoil 
of politics, and in the autumn of 1843, in spite 
of the almost solid Democracy of his district, 
was chosen the first and only representative 
ever sent from the Magalloway to the Maine 
General Court, although at different times 
the New Hampshire portion of the settlements 
has been represented at Concord by Leonard 
York (greatgrandson of the fourth settler), 
Peter Bennett (grandson of the third settler) 
and Ziba F. Durkee, successor to Nathaniel 
Bean on the Isaac York estate, and formerly 
of Lebanon, N. H. 

In 1866 Captain Wilson abandoned the 
Magalloway country and, together with his 
youngest son, purchased a farm, and built a 
new residence, on the shore of the Connecti- 
cut, about five miles north of the Grand 
Trunk Railroad, at North Stratford, N. H. 
Little apparent cause had he for regret, at 
thus bidding adieu to the scene of his mani- 
fold disappointments, trials and afflictions. 

47 



He had, while there, buried three dearly 
beloved grown-up sons, and his aged mother; 
his mills had been swept away by fire and 
flood; his neat stock killed by lightning; and 
of all the fond hopes that had inspired him 
in early manhood to exchange his native home 
and cultured environment for a life of priva- 
tion and hardship, in a far-off wilderness 
country, not one had been realized. After 
residing for a few years on the shore of the 
Connecticut, where he buried the ever-devoted 
companion of his life, he removed, with his 
son, to Old Orchard Beach, where on the 18th 
of September, 1884, he died of paralysis, worn 
out by incessant toil, anxiety and disappoint- 
ment, at the age of eighty-five years and 
eight months. He was buried in the old 
family lot at Westbrook (now Deering), 
beside his hero father, the interment being 
witnessed from the very house where he first 
saw the light, — the worn and weary pilgrim 
had at last returned home. 

Captain Wilson was the youngest son of 
Major Nathaniel Wilson of Westbrook, a 
veteran of the Revolutionary War, and of 
Anna M. Wilson, daughter of Colonel Samuel 
March of Scarboro, Me., who raised and 
drilled in his own dooryard a regiment, which 
he afterwards led on many a bloody field of 
the great struggle for American Liberty. The 
son and grandson inherited many of the 
military proclivities of his heroic ancestors, 
and was wont to remark that no amusement, 

48 



diversion or recreation ever equalled to him 
the enjoyment of a good militia training, in 
which exercises he was an acknowledged 
expert, and attained to the captaincy of his 
company at an early age. 

Though small in stature, being hardly more 
than five feet seven in height, and though in 
his daily walk one of the most unassuming of 
men, yet when aroused in any matter of busi- 
ness, or by any casual emergency, his bearing 
was vigorous and commanding, as that of a 
general on the field of battle. But in what- 
ever circumstances, or on whatever occasion, 
his manner was natural, unstudied and 
spontaneous, as that of a child; and this rare 
spontaneity and ingenuousness of demeanor 
and character lent a charm to his personality, 
which ensured him friendly relations and 
companionship wherever he went, and 
endeared his memory, not only to his sur- 
viving relatives, but to the many, afar and 
near, with whom he had been associated in 
various relations of business. Although a 
man of unswerving moral principle, integrity 
and soundness of Christian belief, he made 
no pretentions as a religionist; he never sought 
religion as an accomplishment, as a personal 
asset, or worldly passport, and he considered 
ambition for a religious reputation, as of all 
worldly ambitions the most contemptible; 
but when it came to the ^ Visdom from above, 
which is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, 
and easy to be entreated, — full of mercy and 

49 



good fruits, — without partiality, and without 
hypocrisy, ^^ — when it came to that, I say, 
his record on high would yield to that of but 
few, since the earthly days of Him who said: 
^^All things whatsoever ye would that men 
should do unto you, do ye even so to them/' 



50 



CHAPTER XIII 

JOSEPH STURTEVANT of Oxford, Me., 
J settled, in 1831, on the summit of the hill 
occupied in part by Messrs. Linnell and Lom- 
bard, and cleared up, with much labor, a large 
and very productive farm, which has ever re- 
mained entirely surrounded by forest. He was 
a man of cheerful and convivial temperament, 
and with a large family of sons and daughters, 
all more or less inclined to look on the bright 
side of life, his home was long the center of 
rural gayety for many miles around. Two 
gifted violinists in the family furnished not 
only their home, but the whole surrounding 
region, with the required melody for any 
festive occasion, and as the sons were leaders 
in music, so were the daughters in the graceful 
art of keeping time thereto, with their nimble 
feet, on the dancing floor. 

Mr. Sturtevant, and all but one of his five 
sons (the eldest never having resided at their 
mountain home), confined their lives quite 
exclusively to the severe labor of their rugged 
farm and prospered thereon for many years. 
All were of sound constitution, vigorous and 
energetic, but George, the fourth son, was a 
prodigy of vivacity and sprightliness, and 
his equal for frolic mirthfulness has never 

51 



been known to the writer of this memorial. 
But grief came at length to that joyous house- 
hold, when the third son (one of the violinists), 
and afterwards the almost idolized mother, 
were consigned to the grave. The halcyon 
days of mirth and song in that happy home 
were o'er. The family scattered to widely 
separate localities, until hardly one, save 
the father, of all that loving circle remained. 
The lonely parent eventually married a second 
time, but survived the dear companion of his 
better days but eleven years. He died in 
1860, at the age of seventy-two, and was 
buried near his own sumptuous ''house in the 
wilderness." 



52 



CHAPTER XIV 

ALTHOUGH no mention of any but the 
first generation of Magalloway pioneers 
was contemplated at the commencement of 
these sketches, it would be injustice, both to 
the subject and to the parties concerned, not 
to mention certain of the sons of the path- 
finders whose records for adventure and enter- 
prise were not inferior to those of their heroic 
predecessors. 

Among these we may mention Lorenzo D., 
eldest son of Richard Lombard, and partner 
with him in all the hardships and labors of his 
pioneer experience. Lorenzo was a typical 
country boy, in the fullest sense of the phrase, 
six feet high, straight, large framed, and no 
Indian of the forest could surpass him in 
pioneer sagacity, hardihood, or the amount 
of labor he could perform in a given time, 
were it a day, a year, or a quarter of a century. 
He was said to be the most expert performer 
with an axe on the Magalloway waters. He 
was one of the most successful hunters and 
trappers, and his record as an industrious and 
prosperous farmer was unquestioned and 
unimpeachable. The first frame house at 
the upper settlement was built by him, which 
house is standing today, and forms an impor- 

53 



tant part of the Aziscoos Hotel, kept by Mr. 
F. A. Flint, the present proprietor of the 
broad and beautiful estate where the subject 
of this sketch lived, died and was buried. 
Mr. Lombard^s untimely death in 1853, at the 
age of forty-five, was apparently hastened 
by extreme exposure in the early spring, 
during a hunting and trapping excursion, 
which resulted in pneumonia, causing death 
in a few days therefrom. Of his family only 
a granddaughter now survives, and the name 
of Lombard has long since disappeared from 
the roll of Magalloway settlers. 



54 



CHAPTER XV 

NELSON FICKETT, eldest son of William 
Fickett, the third of the upper Magal- 
loway settlers, though a young man at the 
time of his father^s migration thither, properly 
claims place among the original pioneers. 
Though never a man of heroic or adventurous 
temperament, he ever maintained the charac- 
ter of an honorable, useful and prosperous citi- 
zen. Being a man of education and scholarly 
inclinations, he early became one of the most 
prominent in municipal or plantation affairs, 
and was seldom or never without official 
position in the community. At a little past 
forty years of age, being left the sole survivor 
of his father's family, he succeeded to the 
whole valuable estate, to which, constantly 
adding by prudent investments and per- 
severing industry, he soon attained to a 
competency which he enjoyed to the last. 
His death, at the age of fifty-six, was caused 
by falling under a loaded team which he was 
guiding, in the winter time, down a slippery 
hillside, which accident he survived only a 
few days. His remains now lie beside his 
father's on the beautiful estate where all the 
mature years of his life were passed, and 
which still continues in the possession of a 
descendant of the family. He was the second 
postmaster at Wilson's Mills, which position 
he occupied from 1864 until near, if not 
quite, to the time of his death. 

55 



CHAPTER XVI 

LORENZO D., eldest son of Israel T. Lin- 
nell, who at seventy-nine years of age is 
still an expert in the use of the rifle, has been 
from his childhood inured to all the vicissi- 
tudes of pioneer life, and from boyhood one of 
the most reliable in all the various exigencies 
thereof ever known in the Magalloway region. 
Late in the autumn of 1845, when a mere 
youth, he joined the Connecticut Valley 
expedition for the survey of a route for the 
Atlantic & St. Lawrence Railroad, and on 
its return homeward was persuaded, against 
his better judgment, by a young lawyer of 
Andover, Me., named Talbot, to leave the 
main body of the company and attempt the 
shortest route to his home by floating down 
the Diamond River on a raft of logs. The 
plan might, perhaps, have been a success, 
but on arriving at the forks of the river, 
where the Swift Diamond empties into the 
main stream, they were overtaken by the 
darkness of night, and being too near the falls 
for safety, they concluded to leave their raft 
and proceed by land. They had gone but a 
few rods, however, when they unexpectedly 
found themselves on an island, from which 
they found it impossible to wade to the main- 

56 




Lorenzo Dow Linnell 
At 86 year^ of age 



land on account of the depth and strength of 
the current. 

There was now no alternative but for them 
to pass the night on the island, and an imme- 
diate fire was necessary to keep them, wet as 
they were, from freezing to death; but how 
was a fire to be obtained? By desperate 
search young Linnell discovered, beneath the 
arm, in his cotton undergarment, a small dry 
spot which he was not long in cutting out, and 
on this, from a water-tight flask, they poured 
powder, which they ignited by flint and steel, 
and with the help of birch bark picked up in 
the darkness, soon had a roaring fire, and 
were out of immediate danger. 

At morning^s dawn the channel of the river 
which they had attempted to ford was frozen 
over to a thickness sufficient to bear their 
weight, and thus they escaped from an island 
experience which had bidden fair to be more 
tragic than that of Robinson Crusoe. The 
episode is since commemorated by the name 
of Talbot's Island, which the scene of their 
perilous night adventure still retains. 



57 



CHAPTER XVII 

THE life of David M., second son of Joseph 
Sturtevant, furnishes an example of in- 
dustry, of fortitude, and of perseverance In 
the midst of misfortune, unparalleled in the 
history of the Magalloway, and rarely sur- 
passed in the annals of mankind. In the win- 
ter of 1845, soon after attaining his majority, 
he commenced lumbering near Errol, N. H., 
and never within the memory of the oldest 
Inhabitants has there been another so dis- 
astrous a lumbering operation as that. Hardly 
a man who entered the woods on that ill-fated 
job came out well and whole. One man, 
John Bennett, Jr., as before mentioned, was 
instantly killed by a falling tree; another who 
stood by his side was injured and narrowly 
escaped death by the same stroke; a teamster 
was afterwards jammed between his sled 
and a wayside stump; and finally Mr. Sturte- 
vant himself was struck above the knee by 
the whole blade of an axe, and saved from 
death only by the most vigorous efforts of the 
crew, who conveyed him to his home as soon 
as possible, dashing snow in his face continually 
to keep the breath of life in his body. Many 
months elapsed before he was again on his 
feet, but with all the surgical skill they could 
obtain, he never recovered the use of his 
knee-joint, and the amount of labor since 
performed by him, on that straight and rigid 

58 




David M. Sturtevant 



leg, has never been surpassed by any neighbor, 
however nimble, healthy or sound. 

In 1847 the young hero commenced the 
erection of a saw mill and dam, on the outlet 
of what has since been known as Sturtevant's 
Pond, where the loose nature of the shores 
rendered the success of the project somewhat 
doubtful. He had hardly got the dam com- 
pleted and the mill in operation when the 
treacherous bottom gave way, and the labor 
and hopes of many months were apparently 
annihilated, but not so in the mind of the 
indefatigable proprietor. He immediately 
repaired the damage and resumed business, 
when away went the water supply again, 
and away went the hopes of everyone but 
himself in the ultimate success of the enter- 
prise. Again was the dam repaired, and 
again swept away, by which time Mr. Sturte- 
vant, concluding he had lost enough by 
building on so uncertain a foundation, aban- 
doned the project and his expensive saw mill 
to oblivion and decay. 

Meanwhile Mr. Sturtevant had been lum- 
bering to some extent in winter, and farming 
in summer. Not long after the events just 
narrated, and soon after harvest, his barn 
took fire and was consumed, with the year's 
crops, together with a valuable young horse. 
The barn was immediately replaced, but 
Mr. Sturtevant soon after took up a larger 
farm, engaged in agriculture on a heavier scale, 
took to himself a wife, and rapidly advanced, 
both in prosperity and posterity. 

In 1861 the dreadful scourge of diphtheria 

59 



broke out in his infant family, and swept away 
his young wife and five children, leaving only 
the youngest, a boy babe of one year, as an 
inducement for the half-distracted father 
longer to live. But employment of the hands 
is a great regulator of the mind, and Mr. 
Sturtevant, by plunging desperately into the 
cares and duties of his several farms, avoided 
what under no worse circumstances has been 
the sad fate of thousands. He thenceforth 
recovered rapidly from his financial embar- 
rassments, came into possession of more real 
estate than any four other men on the river, 
and was virtually landlord and banker of the 
whole settlement. But misfortune had not 
yet lost sight of her favorite victim. In the 
autumn of 1879, again his well-filled barn and 
all his other buildings were burned to the 
ground, and not a cent of insurance was there 
to atone for the loss. 

The calamity, however, bore not as heavily 
on him as those of previous years. His son 
had now become a substantial help in his 
business, and together they soon had a new 
and elegant set of buildings, including a barn 
one hundred feet long, and a small store 
building, now well filled with the great variety 
of goods indispensable to back-country trade. 
Mr. Sturtevant is now in his eighty-sixth 
year, hale and hearty, weighs as usual some- 
thing like two hundred and twenty-five 
pounds, drives his own team in summer or 
winter as occasion requires, attends church as 
often as opportunity offers, and is favorably 
known throughout a wide extent of country. 

60 



CHAPTER XVIII 

THIS hasty and incomplete glance at the 
pioneer experience of the more prominent 
and best known of the Magalloway's early set- 
tlers is now nearly concluded, and ^ Vhat shall 
I say more/' for the time (and information) 
would fail me to tell of Jacob York, the son of 
Isaac, and of Joseph, the son of Jacob; of 
Richard Caldwell, George Tucker, Abel Heath, 
Simeon Shurtleff, Benjamin Knight, of David 
Lombard also, and of Samuel, and the Sawyers 
and Hibbards, who through faithfulness sub- 
dued forests, stopped the mouths of bears and 
wolves, quenched the violence of forest fires, 
escaped the edge of the tomahawk, and who 
wandered in deserts and mountains, being 
destitute, afflicted, and tormented by black 
flies and mosquitoes. And these all having 
obtained a good report through faithfulness, 
received not the promise, but having seen it 
afar off, were persuaded of, and embraced it, 
and declared plainly that they looked there 
for a better country. 

Boston, Mass., March, 1904. 



61 



SUPPLEMENT 

A PERIOD of eleven years since the conclu- 
sion of the foregoing, has wrought some 
changes in the personnel of the community in 
question, some notice of which the subject 
seems properly to demand. The name of Stur- 
tevant, like those of Lombard, Sawyer and 
Hibbard, has now disappeared from the time- 
honored roll, and with only two exceptions, 
the name of Fickett also. 

As to the family of John M. Wilson, the 
township, county and state, where for fifty 
years his name was familiar as household 
words, have now, for nearly a like period, 
known the same no more. 

The family of the Linnells has now extended 
to its sixth generation, the first two in the 
settlement having lately become extinct by 
the death, at the age of eighty-six, of Lorenzo, 
the eldest son of the nonagenarian Israel T. 

The redoubtable David M. Sturtevant 
departed in peace, on April 26, 1906, at his 
own sumptuous home, at the age of eighty- 
eight years. His only son and heir, a promi- 
nent lumber merchant and all 'round business 
man, now resides in Colebrook, N. H., where 
he took up his residence some three years 
since. 

62 




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The oldest continuous resident on the 
river, Mr. Elihu Leavit, departed this life 
December 1, 1907, eighty-four years from the 
time of his arrival there with his parents when 
but one year old. 

The last surviving member of the first 
family in Lincoln Plantation, Mrs. Catherine 
I. Emmet, second daughter of Elder Richard 
Lombard, died in New York, no longer ago 
than October 31, 1912, at the age of ninety- 
eight years, — a lady whose period of existence 
more than spanned the entire age of the A/[agal- 
loway settlements. Of her five robust pioneer 
brothers, it is worthy of remark, that the old- 
est and ablest one of the number died in 1853, 
at the early age of forty-five, after only a few 
days^ sickness with pneumonia. The second 
in years, Samuel, was instantly killed in 1842, 
while assisting in erecting one of his own farm 
buildings. The next younger, David S., died 
at a mature age while sitting at his writing 
desk in his home at Brewer, Me. The fourth 
of the brotherhood, Richard Franklin Lom- 
bard, formerly a veteran of the New Bedford 
whaling expeditions, is said to have dropped 
dead in a street near his home in Wilmington, 
Del., at near the age of eighty years; while 
Henry, the youngest of the family, was fatally 
shot, by an accident, near his residence in 
Des Moines, Iowa. Hardly, if one, bearing 
the name of Lombard, now remains of the 
beloved family of the patriarch Richard, to 
perpetuate his respected and venerated name. 

63 



Automobiles and motorcycles have super- 
seded on the now unexceptionable Magalloway 
highways, the original ox-cart and one-horse 
wagon, and the traditional neighborhood 
gossip of the lady-settlers, as well as the busi- 
ness conferences of the sterner sex, is now 
carried on by telephone, from Parmachene 
Lake to Berlin Falls, and any required extent 
beyond. Not a vestige of dam, mill or 
bridge now remains where once '^the rushing 
and the roar'' of Wilson's Mills varied the 
monotonous murmur 

*'0f that stream whose sunny gleam cheered the little 
rural town." 

The rushing and roar are now supplied in 
that immediate locality by the incessant 
activities of the present proprietor of the 
former mill-site, Mr. Walter Bucknam, who 
during the last thirty years has caused that 
rocky southern shore to rejoice and blossom 
as the rose, and who now rivals the former 
reputation of the heroic David Sturtevant, as 
the most indefatigable money-getter on the 
Magalloway River. 



FINIS 



64 



